


A Season In The Sun

by beetle



Category: Star Trek, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys catch a brief break, and a slice of almost-normalcy. Written for tabaqui, who said," Outside In - Your pairing, from the POV of other characters. I *really* want Sam/Dean, and it can be 'oh they're so cute' or 'oh they're so fucked up', i don't care."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Season In The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own either franchise, more's the pity.  
> Notes: This is a crossover that doesn't deviate from Supernatural canon. It deviates from Reboot canon a lot. No spoilers.

Chatham County, Georgia. July, 1994

  
   
From his rickety, dusty porch, Leonard McCoy watches that damned Impala shags ass down the equally dusty driveway, away from the house and into the westering sun.  
   
“Damn that John Winchester” he grits out, hands balled into loose fists, but fists nonetheless. “Damn him to six different levels of shitty, brimstone-belching He—”  
   
A throat is cleared disapprovingly behind him, and his shoulders slump momentarily as he takes a golden opportunity to exercise a little discretion. He pastes a smile he suspects is more strained that happy on his face and turns to face his lover . . . and the two brats John dumped on their doorstep before going on some sketchily described migrant work back West. Him and that alkie friend of his, Bobby-something-or-other. Stringer, perhaps.  
   
Pavel's smiling down at little Sammy, who's looking up at him and returning the smile like the sun rising. When Pavel drapes an arm around his shoulders, Sammy doesn't hesitate to wrap an arm around Pavel's waist.  
   
They're already fast friends who then turn those ridiculously beautiful smiles on Leonard, who grumbles, and scratches the back of his neck.  Casts a measuring glance the way of the older boy. Junior's a tall, lean, smirking bastard, with Mary's fair looks but John's dark watchfulness about his green eyes.  He's all of fourteen, but looks like he's twenty.  
   
That smirk'd get smacked off, except it reminds Leonard of John, and of the bad old days. Of 'Nam, and repairing broken boys not much older than this one; boys who were many, many thousands of miles away from whatever farm, tenement, or suburb the draft'd plucked them from.  
  
Of them all, the only ones he'd bothered keeping up with after the war were Pavel, Captain Pike, Jim Kirk—(and by default that pasty-skinned automaton Spock, who turns up wherever Jim does since their respective marriages fell apart.  Pavel thinks they're lovers and Leonard thinks that's hogwash—Chrissie Chapel, and John-goddamn-Winchester.  
   
 _Damn that man,_  Leonard thinks, rolling his eyes at Junior's smug bravado. “Alright, Sammy, Dan. Welcome. Pavel'll take you on a little tour of the place while I get your room set up.”  
   
“Dad talks about you sometimes, Dr. McCoy. He said you were war-buddies, but he never said you lived in a  _mansion_!” Sammy says in a pangfully innocent voice. Leonard looks up at the crumbling, cracking, kudzu-covered monstrosity he'd inherited from the father who'd died in a hospital, while his son saved lives in a hostile foreign country. When he wasn't getting stone-drunk off the worst rotgut Asia had to offer and falling into bed with whoever'd have him, that is.  
   
He snorts.  
   
“Maybe it was a mansion once upon a century. Now it's just a big eyesore and money-pit. And it's just Mr., now. I'm retired.” Money's never been a problem for the McCoys, and a good thing, too. Between his own shakes and Pavel's PTSD, neither of them are in any shape to be working.  
   
“By the way,  _Mr.  McCoy_ , it's Dean, not Dan,” Junior says sullenly, shouldering past Leonard to add his arm to Pavel's on Sammy's bony, but wide shoulders. “This place looks like ass.”  
   
“So's your face,” Sammy says, snickering, and in that moment, Leonard cautiously likes the kid; something he hasn't done since his own kid got broken beyond repair.  
   
Junior, he suspects, he can easily do without.  
   
“Vhat about saving the tour for later, and now, ve just get the boys something to eat, hmm?"  Pavel's kindly, excited gaze ticks between Sam's upturned face and Dean's speculative one.  "You two look like you could do vith feeding, yes?”  
   
“I dunno about Sammy, but  _I'm_  starvin',” Junior says with a smile that he no doubt thinks is innocent and charming, and Leonard does  _not_  like this smug little—  
   
“But I'm starvin- _er_ ,” Sammy says obstinately, and if anything, his eyes are more stubborn than Junior's. They're both going to be heart-breakers, someday. “I can help you cook, if you want.”  
   
“I von't hear of this!” Pavel says, making a sweeping, resolute gesture with both hands. “In our home, the guest does nothing.”  
   
“Except keep his room neat and clean.  I trust John Winchester's boys understand the term 'military corners,'” Leonard adds pointedly, and Sammy grins up at him.  Junior rolls his eyes, as does Pavel, whose independent streak—wide as a country mile—led to him getting drummed out of the service.  And Leonard with him.  
   
"Yessir!" Sammy chirrups, grinning proudly.  "Dean an' me do the best military corners since 'Nam.  Dad says so."  
   
"Quarter-pint kiss-ass," Junior mutters, but doesn't deny it.  
   
“Vell, you boys can keep me company in the keetchen, if you like. And maybe help me measure ingredients,” he says, mussing Sammy's hair, and turning a fetching grin on Junior, who looks briefly as young as Sammy. Then he's  _leering_ , like Pavel isn't three times his age.  
   
“I'm real hungry. Hell, I'll bet I could eat  _you_  right up.”  
   
“Actually, I think this'un's old enough to help me shift some furniture and get their room ready, Pasha. You an' Sammy go on and bang some pots together,”  Leonard growls quietly, putting a heavy hand on Junior's shoulder, and a whole hell of a lot of  _over my dead body_  into his tone.  Junior actually looks uncertain for a moment before sneering insolently.  
   
“Nuh-uh, I don't leave Sammy alone in a strange place with strangers. No offense." He shrugs off Leonard's hand and strikes a pose James Dean could've done a thousand times better: young, ignorant rebel without a cause or clue.  
   
“Dean, this isn't a strange place, and Dr. McCoy isn't a stranger, he's  _Bones_. Dad trusted him with his life. So should we.” Sammy insists, shrugging off Junior's hand, in turn. He's serious and genuine in the way only the very young are capable of. It almost breaks Leonard's heart that one day, this kid'll be just another miserable adult with a sack of worries on his back and a chip on his shoulder. But at least he'll live to reach adulthood, and that's more than some kids get.  
  
“Fine,” Junior says with very little in the way of good grace, crossing tanned, corded arms.  Green eyes rake over Sammy angrily.  “Don't blame me when you wind up dead, or something.”  
  
“No vone dies in my keetchen,” Pavel says, sounding just a bit offended, and Sammy's already tugging him into the house and down the hall as if he knows exactly where he's going.  
   
"We almost never get to live any place with a real kitchen," he says excitedly.  "Can we make cookies?"  
   
"Ve can.  I have plenty of carob and rice flour for making not-quite-chocolate cheep cookies.  And almonds—I hope you are not allergeec. . . ."  
   
"Nope!"  
   
" _Carob?!! Rice flour_?!!  Dude, you're gonna fuckin'  _die_!" Junior bellows after them, looking like a lost and disgruntled toddler.  
   
"Language, Meester!" Pavel and Leonard say at the same time—Leonard with much less accent and much more authority.  
   
“If I die, I'll come back and haunt you till you're eighty!” Sammy calls back, laughing.  It's a wonderful sound from such a earnest, correct child.  Even Junior smiles.  A  _real_  smile.  
   
“Only till I get me a shotgun and some rock salt, quarter-pint!” he replies, even louder. Young as he is, he's already got that deep, smoky Winchester voice—the one that used to drive Leonard to distraction like a cat in heat, till he met Pavel.  
   
Then the shotgun-and-rock-salt comment really starts to compute. Rather, it doesn't; what a boy'd want with a shotgun and rock salt is beyond Leonard.  
  
 _Whatever happened to BB guns and sling-shots?  Kids, these days._  He shakes his head, grabs the boys' suitcases and strides into the house without waiting for Junior.  Floorboards complain with every step.  Then in tandem as Junior follows, leaving late afternoon sunlight to spill through the open door.  "Born in a barn, were you, kid?" Leonard tosses over his shoulder.  
   
"Me an' sweet baby Jesus." But the creaking steps make their way back to the door, which is slammed shut.  Then the Junior saunter their way back to where Leonard is leaning on the banister. He gestures Junior up the long staircase ahead of him, just as he takes the initiative of loping up two steps at a time.  “And I ain't a kid!"  
   
”Yeah, you are.  And it's the second room on the right!”  
   
So of course, by the time Leonard's made his way upstairs, Junior's making himself at home in the first room on the left, opening a window and leaning out.  There's an oak right outside the window that several generations of McCoy boys'd used to sneak out and canoodle with sweethearts.    
   
"I said right, and two doors.  Or is your hearing as bad as your attitude?"  
   
"Dude, this place is so  _country_."  Junior straightens up and turns around the huge room in a slow circle, like a man casing the joint. Leonard represses a sigh.  The room looks exactly the way it did when he was a kid, except for the dust-covers over the furniture.  Dusty, well-thumbed Hardy Boys mysteries still sit on the bookshelves amongst trophies and photos.  One bed is perpendicular to the window, the other to the door.  Baseball equipment clutters one corner of the room, football gear litters the other, all of it covered in a thick blanket of dust.  Great Aunt Cord had been the only one who had the fortitude to come in and clean up, and she's been dead these nine years.    
   
It's the room he and Donny shared before he went marching off to war.  Leonard had missed his little brother so much, he followed right after, fresh out of his residency, leaving Jocelyn and their newborn daughter alone in this decaying dinosaur of a house.  Five years later, he'd come back; most of him, anyway.  Bits had been lost to shrapnel and a couple toes to jungle rot; there was a goodly chunk of his soul that rotted off and fell away like the useless detritus it was.  The few bits of his heart that didn't belong to Joanna were already Pavel's, marriage to his high school sweetheart notwithstanding.  
   
But Donny hadn't come back at all.  There hadn't even been enough left to put in a casket. . . .  
   
Junior gives him an impatient wave.  "Hello?  Earth to old-guy . . . somebody already stayin' in here?"  
   
"Used to.  Not anymore," Leonard grunts, watching Junior kick an old baseball into the dusty corner with the rest of the gear. Donny'd been a baseball fanatic, but Leonard's game was always football, and still is.  He wonders which Junior prefers, and if Sammy likes sports at all.  In Leonard's day, that kid would've been called a momma's-boy, no doubt about it.  And nevermind that he never got a chance to know Mary.  
   
Junior, however, would've been—in the parlance of Leonard's many spinster aunts—born to be hung.  
   
“So . . . you two are fags, right?" Cool, challenging green eyes meet Leonard's and Junior strikes that trying-to-hard-to-be-a-badass pose again.  He's slightly bow-legged.  "You and Boris Badenov?”  
   
“That's  _Mr.  Chekov_ , to you, kid.  And you use language like that again, I'll hog-tie you, and wash that smart mouth out with soap.”  
   
“Sor- _ry_.  Are you and the Russian Delight queer for each other?” Junior snorts and investigates one of Donald's old bowling trophies.   Makes a face and puts it back exactly where he found it.  “Hell, I guess a stone statue'd be queer for  _him_. He's prettier than half the girls I've seen. You know. Even though he's old.  Hey, do I have to share this room with Sammy? He snores like a demon.”  
   
Gritting his teeth, Leonard reminds himself what John Winchester—who really used to be a sweet, quiet sort, who could've passed for Donny in certain lights—would do to him if he killed his eldest son. Then he chooses to address only one of Junior's statements. “Yes, you're sharing a room. From what John says, you always have; this place is hurtin' for rooms that  _ain't_  falling apart. And I don't reckon either of us feels like dragging furniture from this room to Aunt Cord's old room, so I reckon you could stay here, as long as you don't make a mess, kid.”  
   
“I'm not--”  
   
“I know, not a kid.”  They both roll their eyes at the same time, then relax their stances: Junior uncrosses his arms and Leonard stops standing like Yul Brenner.  Junior flops on Donny's old bed and makes another face when dust puffs up.  
   
“Golly, this must be what the Ritz Carlton is like!” Junior makes a mocking approximation of Sammy's mansion-face, then rolls his eyes again. “So, we havin' borscht for lunch, or what?”  
   
Leonard shrugs and leans on the lintel. “It's Pavel, so probably some sort of vegetarian stroganoff.”  
   
“That sounds absolutely disgusting.” Junior pats Donny's bed hard enough to make the dust really fly. He hacks and coughs melodramatically, then glares at Leonard. “But not nearly as disgusting as this room.  You know that, right?  That this place is a sty?”  
   
Leonard knows.  After all, he's been putting off cleaning it for almost as long as this kid's been alive.  
   
 _I guess it's time.  It's not like_ Auntie Cord _'s gonna come back and clean up this place. And it'd be a shame to let all Donny's stuff rot and tarnish more than it already has.  Hell, he'd roll over in his grave if he knew I wasn't storing his baseball cards properly, never mind his trophies and photos.  He'd want someone in this room, someone to breathe a little life into this old place for however long.  He'd want someone to appreciate it better than I ever have—_  
   
None of which helps Leonard swallow around the frog in his throat, the sudden pain in his chest, or the stinging behind his eyes.  He puts the suitcase down at his feet and notes that his laces are barely doing their job.  Next time he and Pavel go to Savannah, they'll have to get more.  They'll have to. . . .  
   
Standing up straight, Leonard bends an iron-hard glance on Junior, who hops to his feet, almost at attention. He's John's boy, alright, with the same uncertainty around his eyes John used to have, once upon a war.  And like John, he also knows when to buck authority and when to bow under.  
  
  
"Alright, smarty-arty, you're helpin' me clean the 'sty' and if we don't shilly-shally, we'll be done before supper . . . are we clear?" Leonard snaps in his best imitation of old Cap'n Pike.  
  
  
"Yessir! As crystal, sir!" Junior says crisply, without hesitation; John's got him trained well, and while that, at least, is in Leonard's favor, the fact makes him incredibly sad for a reason he can't define. So much so, he almost smiles when Junior pulls a disdainful, angry face. "I mean, whatever, might as well. It's not like there's anything else here to do till Dad comes to get us. Fuckin' boonies, man. I dunno how you stand it.”  
  
  
Leonard let's his own disdainful face show: it consists of nothing more than a raised eyebrow, but it's enough to make Junior shift and look away. “Been through Lawrence a time or too, myself. Wasn't a glowin' metropolis no matter how you squinted at it. Nothin' but dust and rednecks, just like here. So quit gripin', Robin Leach.”  
  
  
“ _Who_?” Junior scowls blankly and Leonard sighs, scratching his forehead.  
  
  
“Nobody, kid. Nobody.”  
  
  
“Look, I'm not—“  
  
  
“You goddamn well  _are_  until you start payin' taxes. Follow me.” Leonard steps out of the room before the kid can think up a smart-ass reply. “There're sponges and brushes in the hall closet, and a pail. We got work to do, and I mean to be done before sunset.”  
  
  
Junior follows, muttering to himself. “Fuckin' sucks.  _I_  should be out there  _with him_ , huntin' monsters, not stuck here with some old, gay slave-driver. My life fuckin'  _sucks_.”  
  
  
 _Is that what they call migrant work, these days? Hunting monsters?_  Leonard almost asks, then doesn't. Let the kid believe whatever fairy stories he needs to get through the days ahead with a minimum amount of fuss. Hell, if it keeps the kid from driving them all batshit, let him believe John's hunting monsters in Montana, or demons in Delaware.  
  
  
In the meantime, Leonard grimly collects cleaning supplies and shoves them at the sulking boy at his side.  
  
  
It's going to be a  _long_  summer.


End file.
